When Cleveland rapper Colson Baker (aka “Machine Gun Kelly”) tweeted his fans: “Today we flash mob NO MATTER WHAT! 5pm at SouthPark mall in the food court,” hundreds of fans showed up (as did police who had heard about the tweet). What makes such flash mobs possible? The fact that we pay attention to the messages that interest us the most.

Attending, the second step in the listening process, involves devoting attention to the information you’ve received. If you don’t attend to information, you can’t go on to interpret and understand it, or respond to it (Kahneman, 1973). The extent to which you attend to received information is determined largely by its salience—the degree to which it seems especially noticeable and significant. In the Colson Baker case, fans attended to his Twitter post in part because he used caps (visually stimulating), and because it was unexpected (Baker hadn’t made any public appearances in Ohio since he had signed a major record deal). But the main reason they attended to his invite—and showed up at the mall—was because he was important to them: he was a local boy who had made it big.

We have only limited control over salience; whether people communicate in stimulating, unexpected, or important ways is largely determined by them, not us. However, we do control our attention level. To improve your attention, consider trying two things: limiting your multitasking and elevating your attention.